Romney expands the map, buys ad time in Pennsylvania

UPDATE 1:53 P.M: The ad going up in Pa. is below. Looks like the Romney campaign is hitting President Obama for his 2008 comments about coal-fired plants.

UPDATE1:42 P.M: Jim Messina, Barack Obama’s campaign manager, said that the campaign will also purchase ads in Pennsylvania. Messina said he doesn’t fear losing the state, but also reiterated that the campaign “aren’t taking things for granted.”

On the heels of two super PAC ad buys in the Keystone State, Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney will also blanket Pennsylvania with ads this week in the hopes of winning the state that has been a Democratic stronghold on the presidential level since 1988, per a report from the Associated Press.

Details of the ad buy are not known, but Republicans close to the situation told the Associated Press that the ads will begin airing Wednesday in the expensive Philadelphia market in the hopes of swaying some of the all-important suburban vote in Bucks, Delaware and Montgomery counties that went resoundingly for President Obama in 2008.

Romney for President, Inc. political director Rich Beeson confirmed the ad buy in a memo released by the campaign on Tuesday:

“As a campaign, we will put more resources into the target states in the final week, than previous GOP campaigns have been able to do in the final 10 weeks. The Romney campaign has the resources to expand the map in ways that weren’t possible in past cycles (without reducing any effort in any other target state).”

Republican enthusiasm in Pennsylvania is running high as of late, spurred on by the recent performance of Republican Senate candidate Tom Smith. Smith, who has poured millions of his own money in to the race against Democratic incumbent Sen. Robert Casey, Jr., has tightened that race with latest polls showing Smith within the single digits, down from double-digits as late as early October. Human Events predicts Smith to win the race.